The Bombay High Court on Tuesday admitted an application seeking a investigation by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) into the alleged irregularities and corruption in the grant of rebate towards the Covid-19 relief and also for dented buses by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC)-controlled BEST Undertaking resulting in huge loss to the civic body exchequer.
Allowing a praecipe filed by RTI activist and lawyer Pravin Wategaonkar seeking urgency of a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by him earlier this month, a HC bench of Revati Justices Revati Mohite-Dere and Sharmila U Deshmukh agreed to hear the matter at an early date.
In his petition, Wategaonkar said that the BEST Undertaking had on January 23, 2019 issued a letter of successful bidder M/s Sign Post India Pvt. Ltd. approving its offer of Rs. 95.50 crore for display of advertisement on panels of buses of the Undertaking for a period of three years i.e. from February 2019 to February 2022.
The letter of allotment required M/s Signpost to adjudicate the contract agreement as regards the stamp duty payable and execute the same within one month. The contractor acknowledged the letter and confirmed he would comply with the terms and conditions. However the agreement was neither adjudicated nor executed for the entire three- year period, thus evading stamp duty payable of about Rs. 48 lakh and also violating the Mumbai Municipal Corporations Act.
In addition, the public servants of the BEST Undertaking – against Rs 95.50 crore receivable – had granted M/s Sign Post India Pvt. Ltd towards Covid relief and also for dented buses without existence of valid contract thereby causing wrongful loss to public exchequer and wrongful gain to the said contractor of about Rs. 42 crore.
Wategaonkar had earlier lodged a complaint with the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai police. Without taking any action on the complaint, the EOW of Mumbai had forwarded the complaint to BMC Commissioner on January 5, 2023 and maintained existence of 'contractual arrangement’ and asked the petitioner to withdraw his complaint.
In his PIL, the petitioner has urged the high court to direct the EOW to register offences against the officials of BEST including its General manager and others for cheating (section 42o), forgery ( section 463), conspiracy (section 120 B) under the Indian Penal Code, section 13 (criminal misconduct by a public servant) under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988
The petitioner has also urged the high court to direct the ED to invoke the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 and conduct investigations under the supervision of the court without any further delay.